Scientist medal 2018 for LIST researcher

Esch-Belval - In recognition of his outstanding research on New Age Energy Materials and Technologies, Dr. Petru Lunca Popa, a researcher at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) was honored with one of the most prestigious awards in the worldwide advanced materials community.

M. Lunca Popa received the renowned Scientist Medal 2018 on top of his invitation to present his work at the European Advanced Materials Congress 2018, in Stockholm (SE). The International Association of Advanced Materials (IAAM) issuing this Medal is the main international network and interest group for researchers in advanced materials. It is the second year in a row a LIST researcher is awarded such a prestigious prize.

Why is it outstanding?

Dr. Lunca Popa’s IAAM-acclaimed research focuses on Transparent Electronics, a new emerging technological field that uses transparent materials in order to develop “invisible” electronic-based technologies. The research conducted together with LIST researchers, Dr. Jonathan Crepeliere, Dr. Renaud Leturcq and managed by Dr. Damien Lenoble, was focused on the elaboration and fabrication of new conducting transparent materials and on tailoring their electrical properties thereafter (results were obtained in the context of INTER and CORE funded projects – namely PNOXIDE and DEPTOS).

What will it change?

The materials able to simultaneously conduct electricity and transmit visible light are crucial for various application fields as flat panel displays, touch panels, solar cells or light emitting diodes. The fundamental solid state device is a p-n junction, i.e. an interface between two materials having charge carriers (electrons and vacancies) of opposite sign. In order to obtain a fully transparent device both components must allow the passing of visible light. Although many such n-type semiconductors were already reported, the lack of a p-type semiconductor with adequate electrical and optical properties impedes the development of complementary oxide-based technologies. 

The research performed at LIST was focused on copper based delafossites, a class of materials with a very peculiar morphology and electrical properties. The use of Dynamic Liquid Injection Chemical Vapor Deposition allowed LIST’ researchers to synthetize for first time a metastable high off-stoichiometric phase of copper delafossite with the highest p-type conductivity ever reported within these materials. The analysis performed furthermore reveals a specific structural defect, never observed before, as responsible for such high levels of conduction. The results were successfully presented at many international conferences and within prestigious scientific journals.

How is it funded?

This research has been conducted in the framework of LIST's activities in Materials Research and Technology (MRT) within the "Defect Engineering in P-Type Oxide Semiconductors" (DEPTOS) project, funded by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR). The overall aim of DEPTOS, managed by Dr. D. Lenoble, is to provide experimental and theoretical investigations at the leading edge of knowledge and to target the elaboration of Transparent Oxide Semiconducting (TOS) materials with improved optoelectronic properties required for the emergence of technologies based on invisible electronics.

> For any further information on this topic, please contact M. Lunca Popa or M. Lenoble.